After weeks of suffering with the nouveau driver removal and then LOADS of related issues, I have had to give up trying. The farce that is the nouveau/Plymouth/grub integration, is I believe, the biggest Linux backward step since the Pulse Audio cock-up a few years ago.

What happened to "choice" ? It has been sacrificed at the alter of petty morality.

It's about 30 months since I switched to Mint because it offered choice and ease of installation. Sadly for me (and countless others I suggest) it has eventually failed me.

I have returned to using PClinuxOS, Nvidia drivers automatically loaded at installation, no messing about, its just working as it should.

Thanks for posting this, Oscar. I recently found myself with a laptop with LMDE on it and this thread resolved my issues with enabling KDE's extra fancy desktop effects. Now I've got my full range of tasty eye candy! I owe you a brew.

GregE wrote:You could have achieved the same thing by installing the main edition of Mint.

Wrong! that's why I tried LMDE the main edition gave the same problems.

Pete

I am sorry you have had so many issues, but problems have solutions. Nvidia based systems are the best way to enjoy Linux. Intel based systems are also trouble free these days, but without the same level of performance. The ATI open source drivers are also very good except for gaming. Fglrx never seems to be quite right (especially for Gnome Shell users).

The main edition is based on Ubuntu and thus includes the restricted drivers applet. Just install, wait a few minutes until the icon pops up and select install Nvidia drivers. I have installed Mint and Ubuntu countless times on Nvidia based computers and this has never been a problem. There are many thousands of users who actually prefer nouveau, but I am not one of them. There have been recent issues with an Nvidia 290 release not working, but that has now passed with 290.10.

Many LMDE Mint users simply boot to a command line and install and run sgfxi to fetch and install the latest Nvidia drivers. But the LMDE crowd are a breed apart.

If PCLinuxOS works for you then good luck, that is what Linux is about - endless alternatives and freedom of choice.

Possible Errors:1) "You do not have the right GCC compiler version." Just click no and it should continue to use the compiler that you have.2) "You have Nouveau drivers loaded." or "Unable to load the kernel module 'nvidia.ko'." Even after removing/purging i've witnessed this happen, you can blacklist but I find it easier to just run "sudo apt-get remove xserver-xorg-video-nouveau" from the single user mode and reboot. This should have removed the driver. Then re-run

The Nouveau driver can be usable for those that just care about a basic composited Linux desktop for office and Internet tasks, but for gaming and other demanding workloads it is not too viable.

Which is something I've known just with use and simple tests for quite some time. Nouveau is still better than what we had on linux years ago. That was always an issue back then, with ATI even being more of a headache.

Please note that as of the time of this writing, a considerable amount of bug fixes have been applied to the lateset "290.10" drivers provided by Nvidia.

This guide worked perfectly for me, but I want to make a suggestion to the author. The part where you state that:"When done, execute nvidia-xconfig in terminal. After a reboot, the driver is installed."This however has to be done as root, since it configures system files. I think for people who are LINUX beginners this should be mentioned since there is no info about it being successful or not.

PS: I just blacklisted nouveau! I was setting up LMDE for a friend of mine, who I'm trying to convert from MS WIN to LINUX . When we removed nouveau, the system would not boot up properly. Just a blinking cursor infinitely. I did a reinstall and this time just blacklisted nouveau and it worked superb.

whow i see a whole lot of info and steps listed here for me all it took was the following commands inputed to terminal(got a recent nvidia card obviously):sudo apt-get install nvidia-kernel-dkmssudo apt-get install nvidia-glx libgl1-nvidia-glx libcuda1 nvidia-xconfig xserver-xorgsudo nvidia-xconfigrebooted the pc and used : sudo glxinfo |grep rendering to see if 3d acceleration is working ok i suppose its worth mentioning : lmde 64 bit xfce with a GeForce GTX 460 (went with the nouveau drives till all updates got finished including kernel to 3.x branch and only afterwards handled the driver installation issue) btw this method' as well has been inspired' by : http://tinyplanet.ca/~lsorense/debian/d ... howto.html

Update!I just changed back to debian testing instead of mint incomming and got two new kernels, 3.0 and 3.1.After reboot to 3.1 i was faced with terminal login(not the blinking cursor only), no GDM, but booting to 3.0 worked.

Thanks for the guidance in this thread I am now up and running with nvidia drivers. I do have one very irritating issue that wasn't there with the noveau drivers and I can't find a way to change it:

I have used the NVIDIA X Server Settings to obtain the display that I want i.e. 1280x1024 @ 85hz. This works well for me and the settings are saved on exit and reload fine for the next session. However, my wife's login does not remember the settings - she gets 1900x1200 @ 60hz (this appears to be the auto configuration setting). Help in sorting this one would be appreciated.

alakin wrote:I have used the NVIDIA X Server Settings to obtain the display that I want i.e. 1280x1024 @ 85hz. This works well for me and the settings are saved on exit and reload fine for the next session. However, my wife's login does not remember the settings - she gets 1900x1200 @ 60hz (this appears to be the auto configuration setting). Help in sorting this one would be appreciated.

Problem solved.

If I use the Display Settings in the XFCE settings and select 1280x1024 the settings are retained I have no idea why, but who cares it works

I installed the 173xx driver for my old Geforce 5500 and the system crashed and burned, I only got the flashing cursor. Would this have worked if I blacklisted the Noveau drivers? I have previously used this card with the 173xx of earlier versions.

Also I read the ATI can cause Gnome problems? This is a little off topic but when ever I go with a Kernel higher then 2.6.38.2-amd64 on my Lenovo, the system logs itself out once a week for no reason?

Elmacus wrote:Update!I just changed back to debian testing instead of mint incomming and got two new kernels, 3.0 and 3.1.After reboot to 3.1 i was faced with terminal login(not the blinking cursor only), no GDM, but booting to 3.0 worked.

I tried the method suggested by proxima-centauri to install a driver for my GE Force 9500 GT graphics card in Linux Mint 11 but got a list of errors:

"Reading package lists......DoneBuilding dependency treeReading state information......DonePackage nvidia-glx is not available, but is referred to by another package.This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, oris only available from another source